Heritage Education in Indonesia

-
Between 1-5 November 2008 the Indonesia Heritage Trust (BPPI) and the Netherlands Institute for Heritage (Erfgoed Nederland - EN) organised a training of heritage education for 12 elementary schools around Yogyakarta, Central Java, Indonesia.

In 2006 I drafted the idea to introduce heritage education in Indonesia. I have brought the proposal to Elisabeth Wiessner as my "date" of Stepping Stones program. She works for EN and has experiences about heritage education in the Netherlands. We worked out the proposal together, back and forward finalising it and looking for possibility of funding. It took almost a year when finally EN decided to fund the project itself.

January 2008 we started the project and supposed to end it at September 2009. This is a pilot project to find out a method and materials for heritage education in Indonesia with a trial location in Yogyakarta and surroundings. We showed the materials from the Netherlands and also shared the experiences in the hope that can accelerate the process and avoid the same mistakes if there is any. Cees Hageman joined the force and also a big group from Yogyakarta. In May 2008 the EN and BPPI team met in Jakarta and signed an MoU in the Royal Netherlands Embassy.

The Training in Prambanan area this November attended by teachers and headmasters from 12 elementary schools. For five days we introduced what heritage education is and how to introduce it to the students as an insert to the current curriculum. The BPPI team has worked hard to define the best way to conduct the introductions, not only in the conference room of Hotel Galuh but also visiting sites. The site visits were once under the heat of the sun and the next day was constantly under the heavy rain. Despite of the harsh weather, the participants were enthusiast and kept moving from one program to another program. We started mostly at 8am and back to our bed at about 11pm. Long days.

I enjoyed and learned a lot from my interactions with the participants and the resource persons. The participants are the elementary school teachers who never heard even the word 'heritage.' Sometimes their comments or opinions could be surprising and also refreshing, a kind of reminding for me and other heritage freaks that not everyone out there knows what heritage is. When we had a site visit to Sogan Village, Pak Tukiman talked to me, "Why is this village a heritage? I live in this kind of village, too. When we played the music using the rice sticks from wood, I have that, too, at home. When we saw how the soybean cake -tempe- was made, nothing is new for me because I eat tempe very often. For me, what interesting is to see city or computer with high technology. " The heritage freaks from city thought that Sogan Village is an interesting example of cultural heritage, but Pak Tukiman didn't understand why it is cultural heritage. For him, a tour should be a place where he could see something new and unusual. The awareness of heritage is too abstract to define and also depend on who's point of view. That kind of comment was refreshing for me. It was honest and made me realised that who we are to say that this or that is a heritage.

From the plenary sessions, I got an idea from all presentations that the participants understand heritage as a form of traditional cultural creations such as batik, wayang (puppet), old recipes, etc. It is promising that everyone agree on taking the Javanse language as a communication means at school on certain days. I have to admit that heritage has a very broad definition and scope. It is possible to classify almost all aspects of life as heritage as long as they contribute to identity formation of a community. But the most important is not finding the best definition but catching the essence of it and live with it day by day.

It was rejuvenating to be back to the heritage habitat, even better because it represented both Indonesia and the Netherlands. We are all struggling to the same destination : a future generation with a better understanding about their heritage.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Le Corbusier's Ghetto (and how the Dutch deal with it)

-
Image
Last night I took a part in an online discussion for television and live stream programs with the representatives of the Municipality of Amsterdam and the Housing Corporation Rochdale about living in Amsterdam Southeast. It was organized by the New Metropolis Zuidoost, a branch of Pakhuis de Zwijger, a think tank for urban and sustainability issues.  I had to be bold in five minutes that I had during the broadcasting. So what I said is that Amsterdam Southeast was built based on the ideals of Le Corbusier, the Swiss architect, that everyone no matter from which background has the right to light, air, and space. He dreamed of urban development that separated work, living, recreation, and various modes of mobility. This ideal was applied in Amsterdam Zuidoost in the 1960s to be the largest experiment ever in the world in terms of scale and innovations. The experiment was lead by Cornelis van Eesteren, the pioneer of modern architecture in the Netherlands. The reality showed that some...
Read more

INFILL DEVELOPMENT

-
Image
Perpaduan antara bangunan lama dan baru selalu menarik perhatian saya karena saya percaya pelestarian pusaka (heritage conservation) haruslah aktual dan menjawab kebutuhan zaman. Jadi tidak semata-mata dan sama sekali bukan untuk nostalgia. Jika memang niat ada banyak cara untuk mempertahankan bangunan lama dan mengkombinasikannya dengan bangunan baru. Dengan cara ini pelestarian pusaka dan pembangunan baru secara simultan terakomodasi. Solusi seperti ini umumnya disebut Infill Development . Definisinya menurut BUILD, is the economic use of vacant land, or restoration or rehabilitation of existing structures or infrastructure, in already urbanized areas where water, sewer, and other public services are in place, that maintains the continuity of the original community fabric. Solusi Infill Development juga berdasar pada semakin meningkatnya kesadaran tentang pembangunan berkelanjutan dan pelestarian lingkungan hidup. Pendekatan Infill adalah tanggapan terhadap kebijakan pemerintahan ...
Read more

RISE AND FALL OF SUGAR INDUSTRY IN INDONESIA

-
Image
Sugar Factory Olean, Situbondo, East Java, Indonesia  (Source: Het Rozenhuis) The Sugar Industry in Java as shown during the International World Exhibition in 1910 in Brussels, Belgium (Source: J.W. Ramaer)  Heritage hands-on is selected as one of the participants “Sharing and Collaborative: The Footprints of Asian Sugar Industrial Heritage” is a part of the international symposium on “Multilateral, Sharing and Collaborative: Developing a Common Vision of Asian Industrial Heritage.” This event will take place in t he Cultural & Creative Industries Park, Taiwan, 30 th May – 31 st August. The organizer is  the Bureau of Cultural Heritage Ministry of Culture, Taiwan and it is implemented by National Yunlin University of Science & Technology Department of Cultural Heritage Conservation. Heritage hands-on will present the exhibition about "Rise and Fall of Sugar Industry in Indonesia".   I n the 1930’s Indonesia was the world sec...
Read more